Former Lehman Brothers CFO Erin Callan now says she regrets letting her Wall Street career consume all her time, keeping her from having a personal life

The former finance boss of Lehman Brothers has revealed she deeply regrets the sacrifices she made for her job and told working women: 'It's not worth it'.

Erin Callan, who was Chief Financial Officer at the bank and one of the most powerful women in finance, says the price she paid to rise to the top of the male-dominated Wall Street world was too high - and that she regrets not having children.

Callan, 47, revealed that the lack of balance in her life led to her divorce from her first husband, because she would never do anything on the weekends except sleep to 'recharge' or get an early start on Monday's meetings.

'Sometimes young women tell me they
admire what I’ve done. As they see it, I worked hard for 20 years and
can now spend the next 20 focused on other things.

They have called on women to be more vocal
in their attempts to break through a male-dominated culture but have still committed to work huge hours.

Sandberg, 43, has urged women to 'lean in' to their careers before having children, rather than step back in order to prioritise family.

The mother-of-two has sparked uproar by claiming women 'self impose' limits on their careers - but she has been accused of failing to recognise that most people cannot afford nannies that allow them to pursue a big career.

Now Callan has entered the debate with a moving op-ed in Sunday's New York Timeswhereshe discusses trying for in vitro
fertilization with her new husband and the 'devastation' she felt after
losing her job in 2008.

Callan says she's spent a lot of time reflecting on the choices she made since resigning just months before the storied investment bank declared bankruptcy, triggering the Great Recession.

Callan said she used to spend every waking second thinking about work or glued to her Blackberry, something she now believes was unnecessary

Having fun: Erin Callan says that since she lost her job in 2008 she has been able to focus on her personal life and her new marriage

'I couldn’t just rally and move on. I did not know how to value who I was versus what I did. What I did was who I was,' she says.

She has now re-married and is a stepmother. She said she and and her second husband are 'hoping' to conceive her first child through artificial means.

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'I have spent several years now living a different version of my life, where I try to apply my energy to my new husband, Anthony, and the people whom I love and care about.

'But I can’t make up for lost time,' she concedes, now acknowledging that 'most importantly' she does not have children of her own, a far cry from a woman who admits she spent every waking second glued to her BlackBerry.

'I have often wondered whether I would have been asked to be C.F.O. if I had not worked the way that I did.

Callan believes she still could have reached an important position in her career even if she had put more of an effort into her personal life

Lean in: Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg, left, has made news with her book encouraging women to make more of an effort to get ahead in their
professional lives while Marissa Meyer, CEO of Yahoo! has banned employees from working from home

As in her book's title, Sandberg says women must 'lean in' to their work as they consider starting a family rather than leaning out, as they usually do

'Until recently, I thought my singular focus on my career was the most powerful ingredient in my success. But I am beginning to realize that I sold myself short.

'I was talented, intelligent and energetic. It didn’t have to be so extreme. Besides, there were diminishing returns to that kind of labor,' she now realizes.

'I didn’t have to be on my BlackBerry from my first moment in the morning to my last moment at night. I didn’t have to eat the majority of my meals at my desk.

'I didn’t have to fly overnight to a
meeting in Europe on my birthday. I now believe that I could have made
it to a similar place with at least some better version of a personal
life. Not without sacrifice — I don’t think I could have “had it all” —
but with somewhat more harmony.'

Facebook Chief Operating Officer
Sandberg has made headlines with her book 'Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead',
which she says is a call to push feminism forward.

The business exec, who has a personal wealth of $500 million, urges women not to 'lean back' when it
comes to their lives, but to 'lean in' - give it 100% in all areas of
their life - so they can 'have it all.'

One of her core beliefs is that the reason why the percentage of women in senior government and business roles in the U.S. has not risen above 14 per cent is not just down to institutional sexism, but due to women’s unconscious self-sabotage.

She warns of the dangers of female self-effacement, hesitancy and over-thinking. She identifies priorities for women who want to break through the glass ceiling and join her in the corporate stratosphere.

First, they must ‘sit at the table’ at work, literally and metaphorically. Don’t hang around in the background but push forward in the self-confident way men do.

Second, they must ensure their husband or partner does an equal share of the domestic duties.

Finally, and this is the big one, in typical management-speak jargon she says they mustn’t ‘leave before they leave’ — i.e. if a woman plans to have children, she must keep working and striving for promotion to the bitter end. ‘Keep your foot on the pedal until the very day you need to leave to take care of a child,’ she says.

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Former Lehman Brothers CFO Erin Callan regrets putting her career ahead of her hopes to become a mother